Thursday, November 27, 2008

Thanksgiving was always fun in elementary school! Ah, memories of making construction paper pilgrim hats, learning about the Mayflower and eating stringy turkey and mashed potatoes that came from an ice cream scoop and covered with yellow slime gravy. Mmm mmm mmm, those were good times!!!

Here's a newspaper clipping of the lunch room in my elementary school. I was in the first grade and my class is sitting in the back behind the second and third grades. We're all decked out in our Thanksgiving paper costumes.

I'm glad my first grade teacher Miss Fischer gave me a star for my efforts on this Thanksgiving writing assignment.

Wednesday, November 19, 2008

How many of us blew up, shot up or chopped up our beloved Star Wars figures after we hit age ten? I would guess a good majority of kids participated in plastic action figure torture during those angst filled years of boredom. Sad, but true, as millions of helpless Star Wars action figures were victims from our cruelty and I was no different. I committed many heinous crimes against these 3 3/4" action figures with my pal Jeff.

This past summer the spawn of Jeff was excavating the front yard at Jeff’s childhood house looking for pieces and parts. Look what his kid found -

Threepio's leg, back of a Stormtrooper, an unknown leg and some type of sci-fi car.

I can hear the action figure police pulling up to my door with this incriminating evidence and since they’ll be knocking any moment, I better go down into the basement and pull out the rest.

For more proof of my deranged ways, take at look at these photos that I snapped back in the winter of 1980. We reenacted one of the many unseen battles of Hoth.

Ah, those were the days. . . roasting a Princess Leia in Bespin Gown over Sterno until she melted, tying poor Threepio to a oversized bottle rocket and watching Han Solo lose a battle to a Stanley heavy duty hammer. Truth be known, I was a big wimp when it came to destroying my own figures and thankfully Jeff’s figures filled that destructive void. I always kept my action figures safe at home in my toy box, natch.

Be sure to check out the flickr group Growing Up Star Wars to see more photos from the first Star Wars generation!

Monday, November 10, 2008

Back on the weekend of October 25th St. Louis, Missouri had its first horror/model show aptly named Monstrous Weekend. This monster shindig was put on by Kitbuilders Magazine and they went all out to bring a fine group of guests.

The main attraction was meeting and chatting with the cast from the 1968 film Night of the Living Dead and you can see in the photo above that I got a bit too close to one of ‘em. Actually that’s Bill Hinzman, the famous cemetery zombie at the beginning of the film.

St. Louis was the last stop for the Night of the Living Dead 40th Anniversary Tour and most of the cast was present. Unfortunately, the director and head zombie wrangler George Romero wasn’t able to make it due to his shooting schedule on his latest “dead” film. In the photo below the cast was presented with a 40th anniversary cake. From left to right - Charles Craig (Newscaster), Judith O’Dea (Barbra), George Kosana (Sheriff), stabbing the cake is Kyra Schon (Karen Cooper), Russ Streiner (Johnny) and John Russo (screenwriter).

Go check out The Horrors of it All, a pre-code horror comic book blog. Part of today’s post features my scary mug with the lovely Judith O’Dea. The Night of the Living Dead actress is pointing to my snazzy THOIA t-shirt and you can get your own pre-code tee here.

Also visit Weird Hollow for a fun zombie photo from the Monstrous Weekend

Friday, November 07, 2008

I shut the computer off sometime after 10:00 pm on Halloween night feeling content with finishing this year’s Halloween countdown. The next morning I turned my computer on and nothing. My computer was dead and the countdown must’ve killed it.

Thanks to the help of a highly trained computer technician my computer lives again. Before I get back to posting, I really need to clean up the blog, fix some links, work on the side bar and redo the labels.

There is a new Vlad video on Weird Hollow. He wants your questions and he might use them in future Ask Vlad episodes. If you have a question make sure you visit Weird Hollow and Ask Vlad today!

Again thanks to all the Neato readers out there for supporting both blogs. If all goes well and my computer holds up I'll be posting some cool stuff in the near future.